Sunday, August 19, 2012

X-ray Vision

I have been seeing something a lot lately and I thought since I'm an X-ray Tech I would let you all into my world and maybe, just maybe, prevent you from doing something stupid and saving you lots of pain.

I wanted to talk about a Boxer's Fracture. This is a fracture of the hand. More specifically the 4th(ring) or 5th (pinky)metacarpal. More commonly the 5th and the neck of the metacarpal.

I basically see this in boys/men from the ages of 14-32. This is because lots of guys in this age rage are... stupid. They like to punch things. So this is what happens to you:

Ouch.

Boxer's fractures acount for over half of all metacarpal fractures and the 5th metacarpal is the most fractured of them. This fracture does occur in other instances but mostly from punching and more commonly in males than females.

So lesson of the day: Please do not punch a person. But if you need to, don't do this in a "round house" fashion. If you do, the force of the punch concentrates on the neck of the metacarpal on a clenched fist and then boom...fracture.

This is actually a rare fracture for Boxers ironically because crazy enough, they actually know how to punch properly!